


Laughing on the Way Down

by VSSAKJ



Series: You Can Never Kill Me [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games), Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 10:00:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14422995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VSSAKJ/pseuds/VSSAKJ
Summary: No, nothing, not even death.Because there are no spaces between.





	Laughing on the Way Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gargant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gargant/gifts).



You wake to a trickle of sweat gliding down the crevices of your nose, slithering to the corner of your lip like a snake. Dry, your lips part as though expecting sweetness, but bitter salt hits your tongue instead; you thrust yourself upwards, fingers scrabbling and scraping into the dirt on the floor.

Your heart batters against your ribs, more desperate than when you’ve been fleeing from the City Watch.

Falling. It’s always falling.

Chest quivering, you hunch into a seated position, waiting for your eyes to adjust to the darkness around you. You aren’t nervous, but your fingers clench and unclench in time with your teeth, grinding out your impatience with the rapid pulsing of your veins.

You’re alone here. You’re always alone now.

You’ve always hated waking up. When the shaking subsides, you ease upright and weave your way to the space where a window had once been, shoulders dropped and head lilted to one side. You can’t remember when you last ate—it doesn’t matter, because food is tasteless anyway. There’s nothing but a cold black hole where your belly used to be, your skin stretched tauter than a dead whale at a tanner’s.

You blink: the world through the opening looks the way your insides feel.

Formlessness surrounds you, surging grey and purple and black, and you turn around, just to be sure the space behind you still resembles the squat you mark your own. You jolt: “No!”

Before your eyes, the dust-covered floor and cracked floorboards weep away into jagged stone strangeness. The walls fold into oblivion the way rich men open envelopes, and in their place rough peaks erupt the way knives burst through wrists. You throw yourself into the space where you’d been sleeping, just fucking _sleeping_ , and the smell of nowhere fills your nose instead.

You won’t engage with this place. You press your face into the rock, curled up as tightly as you can.

“But there’s a gift for you here.”

The voice is warm—silkier, you imagine, than even the fabric gracing the Empress herself. It seeps over your shoulders and drapes itself around you like a lover, so much so that you’re sure there’s a familiar weight on your back. When you lift your head to peer, sharp laughter curdles the space around you and you find yourself on your feet, swearing and swiping at nothing.

There’s nothing. Because there’s always nothing now.

You let your shoulders drop, and crumple to the ground.

 

It’s the warm weight of watery yellow light filtering between your eyelids that brings you awake. The first thing you do is bite your lip, pinching the flesh until it burns and you taste the reality of your own blood. Pain throbs up your leg and—not for the first time—you fight the urge to saw off your own foot. Your fingers clench, and something squelches.

You fling it away, recoiling and wiping your palm on the grubby fabric balled up atop the mattress. The mark it leaves is red.

Your heart skips.

You creep forward, reaching into the shadowed corner of the room where the object fell. As you draw it into the morning’s light, it pulses. Once, twice. You cradle it between your hands as it begins to beat regularly, three, four, five. The beating of your own heart fills your throat, first faster and faster then slowing to match pace with the strangeness in your hands. It’s blood and metal and fills you with dreadful certainty.

“A gift.” That voice from the Void brushes over your skin like an exhale before your lover leaves the bed, only he’d never left you cold in the night.

It’s his voice that you hear next, from the thing in your hand. _‘You never liked the morning. I made sure to shield you from it.’_

“Idiot.” You tell him, even though he isn’t here to answer.

You think you hear him chuckle.

 

_‘That one nearly scalped you. Remember?’_

You do. You squeeze the heart and keep running; you should be running faster, with the Guard clanking at your heels, but you want to know what else it sees. You want to hear what else it has to say. By the Golden Cat, it recounts the time you barricaded yourselves in one of the top rooms and fucked for hours while some old bitch pounded on the door; on the edge of the Wrenhaven, it murmurs about how you prefer the bite of salt water to the kiss of fresh.

When Kaldwin’s Bridge looms from the mist, you catch your gaze drawn to the highest possible point.

_‘I promised to show you the city from there.’_

It stings—because he can’t show you now, how can he? He’s dead. He’s dead and there’s nothing but meat between your fingers, beating in time with your own heart and telling you things you want to hear. Your mouth is dry; you probably haven’t eaten in days. The corners of your eyes grit with crust. You’re probably insane.

_‘You’d be king of the world from up there.’_

Your mouth cracks into a grin, wider than you’ve grinned since before you were Marked. You set off at a sprint, ducking past the guarded checkpoint and fixing your eyes on the place you want to go: there, and you’ve done it, already a quarter climbed and your heart racing all the while. You hear the sound of perplexed guards wondering how you’ve vanished before their eyes, and you crow with delight. Ahh, but if there’s one thing this Mark has been good for, it’s getting one over on the damn City Guard.

You hear the sound of a gunshot and move yourself to the other side of the tower, now on its outside, now two thirds of the way up. With this power you don’t even have to climb, and the heart in your hand beats faster and faster, and even _stairs_ aren’t worth your time, just a moment, a second, and—

At the highest point, you stop and stare at the sprawl of the city.

Dunwall always seemed smaller on the ground. You turn around, slowly, because the space you’re perched on is barely large enough as it is, and feel cool air in your mouth as you stare. It’s not beautiful, Dunwall, and it’s never been home, because that was his job, but at the same time, you think you can see something special about this place.

_‘I never brought you here.’_

“How could you?” You mutter, halfway between bitter and forgiving. You gesture with your empty hand, waving loosely at nothing in particular. “We could never have climbed up here.”

_‘I was afraid you would jump.’_

The lightness in the air cracks apart like a bird’s egg. You hold the heart close to your mouth, hissing savagely and getting louder as you go on, “So you thought you would stop me? By keeping me safe on the ground? I’ve never been your fucking pet. You’ve never had to fucking take care of me. And if I want to jump, I’ll fucking _jump_.”

You pull back and pitch the heart as far as you can—something lurches out of your throat as it goes, and the black hole in your belly churns like a maelstrom.

Your leg throbs, and suddenly you’re falling.

How you’ve gotten so far from the bridge, you don’t know. How the heart seems to have returned to your hand, you don’t know. Why the wind’s whistling sounds so much like a song you’re sure you used to remember, you don’t know. Why aren’t you afraid? Why aren’t you angry?

Just before you hit the water, you’re sure you hear laughter.


End file.
